There are specific tastes, there are guilty pleasures, and then there are games like 3030 Deathwar Redux that - despite tapping into some of my most primal video game interests - I just can't recommend.

3030 Deathwar Redux is a top-down space-trading simulator, where you pick up missions at a spaceport, buy and sell space cargo, hunt space pirate bounties, buy ship upgrades, buy a bigger ship... et cetera. It's a familiar formula but a difficult one to get right. And while some of Deathwar's gameplay loops are total write-offs (asteroid mining is pointless, as is the barely-playable salvaging mechanic), enough of it does work to make space-truckin' around this galaxy feel pretty great.

At first.

Deathwar's main story is pretty stupid from the beginning, and its dialog is poorly-written, but it does the job of tutorializing and guiding you through the game's core concepts. Optional side-missions picked up from spaceport NPCs offer some opportunities to explore at your own pace, too. And then, once you upgrade to a "split drive" (hyperspace-capable) ship and leave the starter system... scripted side-missions are over.

Story missions steadily degrade in quality as the game marches on, and by the end it's clear that the developers really wanted to wrap it up: dialog cutscenes get replaced with text pop-ups, mission objectives fail to explain their relevancy, some story questions even resolve themselves with no player action. And some later missions make unfortunate use of a very-poorly-implemented on-foot mechanic, which is barely interactive and takes forever because the walking speed is so damn slow.

Meanwhile, you still need to make money for ship upgrades, by grinding through randomly-generated jobs like delivering packages or passengers; there isn't much variety to these job types, and many of them just aren't worth the trouble (requiring you to go to a distant system, then another, before you get paid... ugh).

There is a baffling limit on how many jobs you can accept at once (four), and even more bafflingly, you can't save the game while jobs are in-progress. Which, if you're playing this kind of game correctly, is almost all the time! That one smells more like a save-state bug than a design decision.

Inter-system travel is more frustrating than it needs to be due to dense nebulas, which zap your fuel and can even damage your ship. Initially I thought nebulas were going to be a progress gate, and I'd eventually find an upgrade to power through them - or at least some maps to show the secret routes between dense clouds - but... nope.

And the injury added to that space-travel insult is the in-game radio, which has some legitimately cool music, but shuffles multiple conflicting genres into one playlist and starts a new track every time you dock or un-dock. Like, one moment you'll be listening to a Japanese cover of Take On Me, and then that'll get interrupted by low-fi chiptunes, only for that to get interrupted by classical opera.

It ultimately feels like a mercy that there's no substantial endgame -- I guess you could keep grinding missions to get the money for a capital ship, but... why? Medium-sized ships have more than enough capacity and speed to keep up with late-game missions, and the most expensive weapons are no better than alternatives at a fraction of the price. And other than bigger ships, there aren't any new goals to aim for once the story is over.

I'm not even going to get into the game's control and UI bugs, except to note that they make the already-unhelpful autopilot upgrade pretty damn broken.

3030 Deathwar Redux starts strong, with a promising variety of activities and some fresh new ideas for the genre; props to the early game for giving me a good dose of space-trading action. But by the time the credits rolled, all I could see in Deathwar was disappointment.

Better than: Space Run
Not as good as: Rebel Galaxy
And...: I don't know that they're even playable, anymore, but also not as good as Escape Velocity or Escape Velocity Nova

Progress: Finished the story in a heavily-upgraded Lochu.

Iconoclasts feels like a significant leap forward from the developer's previous game, Noitu Love 2. This is way more than a Mega Man homage -- Iconoclasts tells an epic story using multiple protagonists as they explore an interconnected, Metroidvania-style world.

Well, the world isn't that interconnected; more like the separate-but-adjacent map regions of Dust: An Elysian Tail. (And like Indivisible, Iconoclasts frustratingly refuses to show you more than the current region's map.) The "multiple" protagonists point is also kind of a stretch; main character Robin is frequently rolling with a party of companions, but those characters are only playable for a few minutes of the game's running length. And that "epic" story ... is hard to understand.

The first half of Iconoclasts' campaign is pretty light on storytelling, and yet is still difficult to follow due to a crazy amount of factional jargon. The One Concern is an army fighting for the defense of City One which is ruled by Mother, and there are Agents with super-human abilities granted by Ivory which is also the planet's primary fuel source, while the One Concern General hates the Agents (and also... is one?) and they all enforce Penance upon religious criminals, especially the Pirates which are really a tribe called the Isi who also get Ivory from plants? but not upon the ChemiCo science group which works for the One Concern but also helps the Pirates and Settlers under the table by crafting your weapon upgrades.

In the second half, this narrative stew starts to come together in a meaningful way, and the game fleshes out its pseudo-religious backstory with cool sci-fi elements. ... but the story never completely makes sense, and ultimately I can only speculate regarding the true nature of Ivory and Planet Spines.

Iconoclasts spends more of its narrative focus on characters than on world-building, with uneven results. NPCs gush about Robin, and how strong and helpful you are, but Robin herself only communicates in emotes. Mina is a two-dimensional character whose down-to-earth plights are sympathetic, but she talks too much and her scenes drag on a bit long. And most other characters are just bad people. Especially Robin's brother Elro, who is set up like a stoic ally but is really just an abrasive, antagonistic asshole.

Alright. So how about the gameplay? Well, it's pretty good I guess.

Robin's got a wrench, which can be used as a close-range weapon, as well as a gun which acquires a few different modes over the course of the game. Most enemies have immunity to some forms of attack - like, wrench hits and stun gun shots may just bounce off - so combat tactics are shaped around learning and using the proper ability for each enemy. This gets more interesting in boss fights, where each phase or each weak point requires a new tactic.

That puzzle-like complexity is balanced, and arguably a little dulled, by how easy the fighting is (at least on Standard difficulty). Most enemy attacks don't do a whole lot of damage, and only a couple of boss fights really challenged my dodging or parrying abilities. This definitely kept the game at a low level of tension, but I'd rather that, than have to repeat those fights over and over again.

There are also non-combat puzzles, which can become rather devious as you accumulate more tools and techniques. And a few that are devious due to hidden bullshit, like I literally couldn't see the platform I was supposed to jump on, so inevitably I started popping open a walkthrough every time I got stuck. While most of the game's puzzles are just fine, plenty of them could have used a little more design polish.

The action and puzzle gameplay in Iconoclasts may not be mind-blowing, but it works, and the game's rich visuals and catchy soundtrack help make up for its confusing world map.

It's a shame that the story is so messy, but overall Iconoclasts is fun enough to be worthwhile from start to finish.

Better than: Pocket Kingdom
Not as good as: Indivisible
More exciting, but less puzzling, than: Toki Tori 2+

Progress: 100% on Standard mode.

7 Billion Humans isn't "just" a sequel to Human Resource Machine; it also expands the fake-programming domain to multi-threading. Your program runs on multiple agents/workers at once!

Unfortunately 7BH doesn't fix the biggest problems I had with its predecessor: dragging-and-dropping instructions is a chore, the instruction set is awkwardly limited, as is its concept of memory or variables... and this game's new complexities exacerbate a voodoo-polymorphism problem that the previous game merely hinted at.

Egotistical professional programmers (like myself) often look down on languages like PHP and JavaScript because their type systems, or lack thereof, inhibit strict definitions of a program's expected behavior -- encouraging unexpected behavior that's difficult to debug, or even to detect. 7 Billion Humans may keep its instructions "simple" by dodging the question of type-safety, but this leads to haphazard consequences like step sometimes not working depending on the state of another worker in the destination, or giveTo throwing your worker into a shredder if it isn't holding anything.

Personally I find this kind of unpredictable mechanic tiring and unsatisfying - in programming or in video games generally - and this eventually dulled my interest in solving the game's ongoing puzzles. I didn't even get far enough to unlock functional synchronization instructions; in most of the puzzles I completed, 7BH's multi-threading concept was more like a proxy for running the same program over multiple data sets.

7BH also doesn't address my most-superficial criticism of HRM, that it doesn't compare your solution's memory- or runtime-efficiency with other users. I kinda feel like this is a requirement for modern programming games.

7 Billion Humans was mostly fun as far as I played it, and it does boast significantly more puzzles than Human Resource Machine did. But I got bored of its programmer-unfriendly UI and "magic" behavior around the halfway point.

Better than: Opus Magnum, Silicon Zeroes
Not as good as: Exapunks, Human Resource Machine
Nerd alert: if the game supported modular code (functions), I might even have written some type-safe helper modules. Alas.

Progress: 34 "years" (puzzles completed).

Not much to say, here; I tried Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance again and stopped even sooner than the last time I played it.

As I was six years ago, I'm annoyed that the game doesn't do a very good job of explaining what it wants me to do. The difference this time around is that I have less patience to learn how to git gud properly exploit this combat system. How many die-and-retry loops, how many online references, will it take? More than I'm up for.

My more-recent attempt at Transformers: Devastation and replay of Vanquish have also tempered my expectations of Revengeance -- that is, I'm not looking forward to uncovering the rest of Raiden's story. Those other titles reinforced that, past a shiny presentation and bombastic-but-shallow narrative, the "point" of a Platinum game is its combat... and I'm just not that into it.

Progress: Gave up on the Blade Wolf fight in R-01.

Factorio isn't a perfect game -- not even "perfect for me," in the sense that some narrative elements and improvements to tech-tree pacing could make it "more perfect for me." But, well, it's a good thing that I had this past week off of work and could spend multiple full days (and two all-nighters!) building a spaceship factory.

Calling my 60-hour creation a spaceship factory is absurdly reductive, but that reduction is the key to Factorio's charm. To create rocket fuel, you need light oil; for that, you need a chemical plant; for that, you need steel plates... ad infinitum. The layers upon layers of manufacturing objectives, not to mention the required research to unlock them (and the science packs to perform research!), are wonderfully clear in defining "what" you need to do and delightfully vague in "how" to bring it all together.

At their best, discrete components feel like meaningful objectives all on their own, like the firearm magazine which is a necessary staple while also building toward upgraded ammunition. Some components aren't so satisfying, like the aforementioned light oil and its refining counterpart heavy oil. But even then, the fact that every manufacturing problem breaks down into individual parts lends Factorio an addictive "just one more step" quality, which is what kept me playing into the wee hours of the morning.

I called out the game's pacing earlier, and there's one very specifically frustrating part of the tech tree that I'd suggest changing: the full utility of a logistic network (specifically the requester chest) isn't unlocked soon enough. Until you can use drones to ferry material from factory to factory, everything has to be done with conveyor belts, and the complexity of belt layouts required for some multi-stage manufacturing is a damn nightmare.

To highlight this, look at the tree of inputs for the utility science pack, and how many materials are shared by multiple layers. This science pack is required to research the ability to build a logistic network -- so you can't use a logistic network to build it, at least not at first.

Consequently, once I had finally unlocked requester boxes, I spent the better part of a day replacing my byzantine belt networks with flying drones. And then I discovered that I'd exceeded my electricity production, and had to expand my reactor complex.

I'll admit that this manner of "and then..." effect is often torturous; but I also really enjoyed it. Hell, unknown-unknown problem solving is part of what I'm paid to do.

Toward the end, or at least toward where I ended the game (after launching a rocket, you can keep going and build even more insane shit), I would also complain that some building processes just take too long. The raw time involved in making a rocket control unit, of which you need one thousand to launch the rocket, made this part of the game feel like an idler where I spent quite a while sitting and waiting.

I haven't even mentioned Factorio's combat, which ultimately doesn't feel like an important element. At first, defending yourself and your assembly lines from hostile bugs can be downright harrowing, but once you've got the manufacturing capacity to keep up some gun turrets - and once you learn that destroying nearby hives will effectively stop the attacks - combat becomes a very low priority.

Well, and you'll need to keep up an arms race as your increasing pollution levels lead to bigger and badder bugs. But once you can build a tank and load it with explosive shells nothing really stands a chance anymore.

So, yeah, there are parts I was underwhelmed by and parts that I definitely think could have been done better. But none of that changes the fact that Factorio is the first game in years that kept me up literally all night playing.

Better than: Infinifactory
Not as good as: Exapunks
As for what's next: when will Satisfactory leave early access?

Progress: Launched a rocket.

I appreciate that Gotham Knights is being up-front about how it isn't a "Batman" game. Bruce is gone, Bats isn't even part of the title -- and whether or not Knights incorporates any stealth, the footage so far is clearly more focused on combat.

Arkham Asylum was an excellent Batman simulator, while its follow-ups City then Knight gradually added more open-world superheroism. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing if Knights iterates specifically on the latter, especially since this dev studio has some relevant experience from the Arkham Origins spin-off.

That said, the dialog in the demo trailer... ugh. I would have hoped Batman & Robin was a low narrative bar to clear, but dramatic banter like "We'll see about that" has me nervous.

A lot has changed since I last tried (and subsequently purchased) Factorio: my career, my lifestyle, the state of the world in general, and - critically - my expectations of modern video games. So it's something of a relief that, six years later, Factorio 1.0 still satisfies the same industrial urges as the demo.

I will say that I'm a little disappointed at the lack of narrative complexity; Factorio's setup is more like a Civ "campaign" than a story-driven one. But hoping for anything more was a long shot.

In spite of how popular and bloated the Open World Survival Craft genre has become since 2014, Factorio's focus on logistical automation doesn't feel stale or samey. The game does have a tough balance to strike between big-picture objectives and detail work, due to how many intermediate layers are involved in some recipes -- but at least so far, it feels pretty good. I like standing back and marveling at my well-oiled machinery, and I also like diving into the conveyor belts to fix or optimize specific parts of my supply chain.

What I'm still getting the hang of is the integrate-or-refactor dichotomy. Unlike Zachtronics and other programming-puzzle games, Factorio doesn't just accept your solution and move on; you'll need to continue smelting plates, or assembling widgets, as dependencies of later manufacturing. And while it's tempting to plug output X directly in as an input to Y, this becomes a liability when you discover that you also need X as an input to Z. Sometimes the assembly line for X just needs to be painstakingly re-architected.

I definitely need some more practice to develop good planning instincts, for creating infrastructure that's modular and flexible from the start. ... kind of funny how Factorio's learning curve resembles professional software development in that way.

Progress: Finished the tutorial (after nine hours!).

Architecturally and thematically, Dex is a 2D side-scrolling interpretation of Deus Ex: an open-world cyberpunk dystopia that encourages varied playstyles. It's an ambitious design to ape, and while Dex pulls off a surprisingly-good narrative, the execution of its gameplay leaves much to be desired.

Dex's story starts with a cryptic message from an elite hacker, a "chase" sequence (low-key since it's also a tutorial), and the reveal of the game's central conspiracy: a shadowy techno-oligarchy attempting to control society with weaponized AI. ... that summary may sound a bit hackneyed, but the game's writing and characterization are on-point, full of sordidly detailed technobabble to flesh the story out.

The pacing of story missions is a bit wonky, in part because a lot of exposition is saved for the end, but especially because some earlier missions feel like wild goose chases. To progress the story you need a hacking upgrade; but first you need to get an augmentation from the doctor; but first the doctor needs some equipment from the store; but first the equipment supplier needs you to run an errand; these missions are pretty transparent in their purpose of introducing new characters by stringing you along.

On the flip side, Dex's optional side-missions are more compartmentalized, and really great at making the game world feel alive. These missions are full of well-polished details like emails that reveal characters' secrets, notes that hint at safe combinations... the same kind of satisfying minutiae that makes Deus Ex so engrossing.

Sadly, inbetween talking to characters and hunting for information, the rest of Dex's gameplay is kinda just bad.

Melee combat is a mess, as enemies love to block your blows and knock you down (interrupting the game's flow while you wait for Dex to stand back up). They also take and deal out plenty of damage; I seriously could not get through the game's introduction until I lowered the difficulty. Gunplay is also a mess, as bullets don't do enough damage to stop enemies from getting in your face -- also, the control for aiming is the same as the control for dodge-rolling, so be careful with that!

The hacking interface is basically a twin-stick shooter, and on top of being fairly repetitive, it relies on an energy resource which you have to exit the interface to recharge. Lengthier hacking sequences are an exercise in entering the hack, making incremental progress, going back to the exit, recharging, and repeating several times over.

All of these mechanics can be made less awful by investing skill/upgrade points against them: punch enemies harder, shoot at them more accurately, hack faster, et cetera. But even fully-upgraded, these core components of Dex's gameplay peak at "mildly annoying." At their worst - especially early in the game, when you don't have upgrades yet - combat and hacking are frustrating chores.

And while Dex embraces the spirit of Deus Ex in providing non-combat methods to solve problems, in practice it's got the same flaw as Human Revolution's bosses: there are some fights that you just can't sneak or hack your way around.

Dex is impressively competent at the storytelling aspects of a techno-conspiracy thriller, and its world-building sidequests are genuinely awesome. But the game's non-narrative mechanics are poorly executed and un-fun, ultimately bringing the whole experience down with them.

Better than: Deus Ex: The Fall
Not as good as: Deus Ex: Human Revolution - The Missing Link
This game was "enhanced" at some point in the past few years: which makes me wonder, and fear, how rough its original gameplay might have been.

Progress: Finished on "Casual" combat difficulty.

Ittle Dew 2+ is overall a competent and worthwhile iteration on its predecessor. It's an unabashed Zelda-like with a silly and fun story, and a keen focus on gameplay fundamentals: block puzzles, varied enemies, magic items hidden in dungeons, secret caves with optional upgrades scattered around the world map.

My only real complaint against the first game was that it was short, and this sequel remedies that thoroughly. Not just with a bigger map and more numerous dungeons -- there are also more items and gameplay mechanics to keep that more-expansive content feeling fresh and fun.

There is a dark side to Ittle Dew 2's ambition, however: boss fights. The game's combat leans toward "unforgiving" in general, but bosses are especially heinous in the amount of damage they can both take and dish out.

One dungeon boss had me dying and retrying so many times that I almost broke my chair. I did eventually win, though, motivated by my desire to see my way through the game. And then I got to the eighth dungeon boss, a seriously nine-minute-long encounter where dying at the end makes you restart the whole thing.

Which is exactly what happened to me, causing me to immediately quit the game forever.

Mid-encounter checkpoints, or even just a lower difficulty setting, would have been enough to push me into this fight again -- maybe even to win it, and unlock some post-game content. But the game clearly wants me to suffer here, and to that I say: no, thanks.

Up until that point, Ittle Dew 2 was a true pleasure, and I'm very satisfied with how it improved upon the first game. Exploring the map looking for hidden chambers was a delight, as was solving my way through each dungeon. I've got no regrets about the hours I spent delving into this weird world.

I just won't get to experience the totality of its content, due to punishing boss design. Oh, well.

Better than: Anodyne, Cat Quest, CrossCode, Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas
Not as good as: The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
On balance, basically just as good as: Ittle Dew; more good stuff, tainted by frustrating bosses.

Progress: Gave up on the Passel fight.

Deadbolt feels like a mildly-Gunpoint twist on Hotline Miami. I love being able to see the level zoomed out, and plan my approach; I love the environmental opportunities to move through air ducts, or flip over a table for cover; I love the flexibility afforded by finding (or purchasing) additional weapons and varying my combat tactics accordingly.

Unfortunately, like Hotline Miami, Deadbolt kills you in one hit and makes you restart the level when you die. I don't love that.

This is a non-issue in the early game, when there are only a couple enemies to get rid of and a mission feels like a short puzzle. But as the levels get progressively larger and more full of instant-kill enemies, the repetition of dying and retrying just gets too annoying.

As much fun as the sneak-and-assassinate action is, and as curious as I am to see new weapons and environments, I don't have enough patience to keep trying a level over and over again.

Better than: Hotline Miami
Not as good as: Mr. Shifty
Maybe the Gunpoint comparison is rough: but the simple side-view art feels similar, and also, I miss Gunpoint.

Progress: Finished a few Zombie Kingz missions.