Batman: Arkham City is still a super-fun implementation of Batman's rogues gallery in an atmospheric open-world sandbox. But... revisiting the game does shine more light on its shortcomings than I saw in 2011.

In retrospect, a key aspect of Arkham City's story is that despite being "in" an open world, all the important parts are linear. It's really not that different from Arkham Asylum's style of storytelling -- but with city blocks, instead of narrow corridors, punctuating mission objectives.

To put it another way: Arkham City's sandbox is built to support its story, more than the other way around. Side missions aren't just wholly detached from the main storyline, they also tend to be insubstantial on their own. Creative effort was clearly far more focused on the story missions than on other activities in the open world.

(Compared to the side missions in Arkham Origins, which I recently called "uncompelling", I still think Arkham City's are more interesting... but not by very much.)

That being said, despite the highlight of Arkham City being its narrative, that story falls short of the bar set by Arkham Asylum. And I can pin the blame for that on two men in paricular: Mr. Freeze and Ra's al Ghul.

I'm not complaining that they're bad villains: actually, these are two of my favorites from the Bat-verse. Nor am I complaining that their parts in the story were forced, or a slog: neither were as "forced" as the Solomon Grundy boss fight, nor as much of a slog as the Penguin's museum dungeon, both of which fit perfectly into the game. (Hell, as far as Grundy goes -- randomly throwing oddball characters into an event is part of what made Arkham Asylum so thrilling.)

My problem with Freeze and Ra's is that they feel so much like a deus ex machina to the game's plot. The dire needs for Freeze's pharmacology expertise, and for Ra's's magic blood, don't seem like they fit in a world where Batman and Alfred can solve similar problems on their own; and these characters' immediate availability in Arkham City is just too convenient to believe.

When Ra's appears later in the game's story as a big plot reveal, that moment is a lot more thrilling and satisfying. And totally unrelated to Batman needing his fucking blood.

I don't want to oversell my complaint here, which is really just that a couple of character introductions are distractingly awkward. The overall story is nevertheless an entertaining rollercoaster ride from start to finish. And while I'll whine - endlessly - about how much bullshit the Riddler collectibles are, their additional lore rewards (audio recordings and Arkham City Stories) fill in some satisfying context about the origins of Arkham City.

The audio recordings particularly highlight how great Hugo Strange's voice actor was at conveying unsettling sinisterness. It's a shame that so much of his character is hidden away in these optional unlockables.

Replaying Arkham City was fun, but did remove some of the rosy tint from my glasses, so to speak. In fact, revisiting it and Arkham Origins so close together has increased my apprecation for the latter; it may have been an uninspired sequel, but it put a lot of effort into measuring up to its forebear.

Better than: Batman: Arkham Origins (PC, PS3, WiiU, X360), Marvel's Spider-Man
Not as good as: Batman: Arkham Asylum
That Riddler bullshit: still way too much work for an underwhelming payoff. But I did it again, for the achievements.

Progress: Finished the story and most side missions.

Batman: Arkham Asylum is still good enough to start on a Sunday afternoon and finish later that same evening.

Like I wrote last time, there are some mechanical shortcomings - compared to later Arkham games - which are plainly evident. Some combat gadgets don't exist yet, the tactics for Titan enemies are pretty limited, and you can't stealth-takedown from a floor grate (!!). As a result, revisiting Arkham Asylum does have a bit of an "old" feeling to it -- not a big deal, though I wonder if I'll still be this forgiving in another five-or-ten years.

On the other hand, Arkham Asylum demonstrates some prowess which present-day games still struggle to measure up to. Its story pacing is great - maintaining a steady rhythm of supervillain cameos and plot reveals from beginning to end - and it's incredible to see how those story events affect the world map. Actually, it's hard for me to think of a better example of this particular Metroidvania tenet: when a game uses backtracking as an opportunity to demonstrate how the narrative is changing the game world. (Metroid Fusion did pretty well at this, from what I recall.)

And while I'm not going out of my way to finish this game's collectibles, that's only because I've done it before. They're way more attainable than the absurd amount of Riddler bullshit in following games, and this set of character profiles represents a surprising volume of Batman memorabilia.

Arkham Asylum may not have the openness of its followers, but its tight craftsmanship makes it a tough act to follow.

Better than: Batman: Arkham Origins (PC, PS3, WiiU, X360)
Not as good as: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Hearts of Stone
We'll find out soon: whether Arkham City has aged so well.

Cold, Cold Heart is like Batman: Arkham Origins in that, even if we could have done just fine without it, it's a good enough excuse to go Batman-ing around town for a few hours.

I mean, sure, it's pretty far from a master-class in DLC packs. It's almost entirely linear: the "open world" doesn't appear until halfway through, is limited to two of the main game's nine districts, and has only a small handful of side-activities (which are even less narratively meaningful than those in Arkham Origins). It glosses over the question of "What ability upgrades did the player already get?" by unlocking everything from the main game -- except, hilariously, the Glue Grenade. There's only one "new" upgrade, with minimal effects; after a few hours of build-up, Batman's new suit has the same general characteristics as his old one. And Mr. Freeze was already in the last game, so we're not exactly covering new ground here.

Like, by the numbers, this would be a phoned-in expansion. But it succeeds in the same way that Arkham Origins did: by providing exciting combat and stealth sequences, in the spirit of the Arkham franchise. It may not be innovative, and it may not be smart, but it works.

Case in point: the story begins with you playing as Bruce Wayne, and Mr. Freeze invades your dinner party, so you beat the living shit out of his gang while Alfred keeps your dinner guests distracted in the other room. Thrilling set-up! But... you're still Batman, so you don't kill the gang members, you just knock them out. Cold, Cold Heart is a success because it moves quickly enough to prevent you from considering what those guys will say about Bruce Wayne when they wake up.

It's kinda dumb, but it's still fun.

Better than: Deus Ex: Human Revolution - The Missing Link
Not as good as: Deus Ex: Mankind Divided - System Rift
It's been a while, but maybe comparable to: Batman: Arkham City - Harley Quinn's Revenge

Progress: Finished the story, did like ... half? of the optional stuff.

I've been hankering for a Batman fix for a while, and figured I may as well start with "the bad less-good one."

Batman: Arkham Origins has an awkward start - despite being a prequel, it feels like it assumes a moderate understanding of Batman and of how the Arkham games work - and the story pacing is a poorly-architected mess. (Ugh, the Joker psychoanalysis sequence... way too long.) Its side missions and optional content are generally uncompelling, its mechanics are minimally innovative (that's not a freeze blast, it's a glue grenade!), and it's impossible to finish the game without noticing at least a few bugs.

One of the more amazing bug examples I observed in my playthrough was, while interrogating a crime suspect and talking with Alfred on remote comms, the suspect's lips moved in sync with Alfred's dialog. Yikes.

But by the game's end, its missteps and stumbles are mostly overshadowed by some solid high-octane set pieces, and by the excellent fundamentals of the Arkham series: free-flowing combat, tense stealth segments, and satisfying Metroidvania-style progression. Even a "bad" Arkham game is a fairly good game overall.

So here's where I make an unusual link between video games and current events: the state of civil unrest in the U.S. has some poignant echoes in Gotham City's rampant police department corruption, and in Batman's brute-force approach to "justice." Sure, Batman is a community hero and a defender of the peace -- and he even refuses to kill! But his propensity for applying overwhelming physical force, including literally stepping on suspects' faces while interrogating them, takes on a new and chilling undertone today.

Batman has been portrayed in many different ways over the past 80 years, and a fascinating foible of our modern, "dark and gritty" Bat is the occasional admission that his revenge-fueled vigilantism isn't something to be admired -- even that it, in part, propagates Gotham's endless cycle of violence. But it's not like he's about to stop taking matters into his own hands, and breaking the bones of whoever stands in his way. The overall message can be ... a little mixed.

Better than: Marvel's Spider-Man (though, admittedly, it's close)
Not as good as: Batman: Arkham Asylum (as I remember it -- a memory I'll be testing soon)
I learned my lesson from last time: and won't be bothering with the Riddler's collectible bullshit again.

Progress: Finished on Normal, 32% completion.

I recently watched The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (December, 2008) and was shocked at some of the visual similarities to Uncharted 2 (October, 2009).

For the record, Mummy: Jet Li was pretty awful.

Exhibit A: The Mummy crew and Team Drake both visit an ancient Himalayan village.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (image credit: playstationtrophies.org)

Exhibit B: Yetis, who crash both of the aforementioned parties.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (image credit: ilovetheyeti.blogspot.com)

Exhibit C: Both the Dragon Emperor and Lazarevic seek eternal life in Shangri-La (which Nathan Drake calls "Shambhala").

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (image credit: gamesradar.com)

Although its commercial failure suggests that not many people actually saw The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, I'm not the only one to note some resemblance between these two productions. Did Naughty Dog draw inspiration from Mummy 3 for some of its late-game environment art?

... or did both productions use some common reference material? Yeah, that seems more likely, especially since by 2008 much of Uncharted 2's art should already have been done. In fact, some internet sleuthing shows that some of these common elements may have prior art from 1997, in Tomb Raider II.

So I guess the moral here is that nothing is original (including the very realization that nothing is original).

I just don't "get" Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen.

The game's intro sequence is immediately impressive, by virtue of its robust and intricate combat system. Commands are simple to execute; AI-controlled "pawns" keep the action flowing; and there are surprising, mini-game-like strategic twists, like climbing on top of large monsters or removing their limbs (like cutting off a scorpion tail to prevent poison attacks). The intro sequence's fights stoke the imagination about treating enemies like puzzles, and Shadow of the Colossus-like encounters with oversized baddies.

Then time fast-forwards, you customize a character, some heavy story cutscenes play out, and there are a few more boss fights, before the game "opens up." And that's where the wheels came off, for me.

The world of Dragon's Dogma is open, but not really open. Incomplete maps and vague quests beg you to go out and explore, find items and points of interest, stumble across adventure!, except that the map is also filled with enemies who will kill the absolute shit out of you. Many map areas and quest markers are essentially blocked due to the absurd strength or number of enemies along the way there.

Combat stops being fun when you're stuck in a seemingly endless stream of wolves, or when a bandit captain can chop off half of your health in a single attack. And especially when, after miraculously surviving one of these frustrating encounters, there's another one waiting for you just around the bend.

The amount and severity of combat seemed unreasonably hard for where I was in the game; even after turning the difficulty down to Easy, I'm still not sure if I picked the "wrong" places to go and quests to attempt, or if I'm just that bad at the game. (A big part of the problem is that quests don't clearly indicate their expected level or strength, but according to the community that would be a crutch and I just need to git gud.)

And the payoff for suffering through these trials doesn't feel worth it. Granted I haven't seen much of the story yet, but what I have seen sits uncomfortably between hackneyed fantasy tropes and obtuse nonsense. I really can't tell if the NPC dialog was poorly translated or if the game doesn't give a shit whether I understand what's going on.

The last quest I did, a detour to find a witch in the woods who would answer some questions about the main quest... didn't answer anything at all. An hour's journey followed by a minute of stilted conversation with zero information, and then it was time to head back home! Thanks, witch.

I think there may be a working, enjoyable sandbox RPG in here that I'm just unable to understand. Unfortunately online resources for Dragon's Dogma seem to fall into the same hostile-unhelpful category as Dark Souls, i.e. none of the tips I've found have really addressed my problems. For me, the combat is too high-risk, and the story too low-reward, to justify dumping more hours into it.

Progress: Level 10-ish, found the witch in the woods.

Molek-Syntez is to SpaceChem as TIS-100 is to Shenzhen I/O. If you've played Zachtronics games before, this analogy should be a fairly complete description.

Like TIS, it has a pretty simple base instruction set: synthesizer lasers can add and remove hydrogen atoms, move and rotate molecules, and perform a couple of other miscellaneous functions. Goal molecules must be synthesized from input molecules by executing these instructions in the right sequence.

Unlike TIS, your resources (instruction memory and playfield space) aren't dramatically limited. This leads to a much "freer" feel in Molek-Syntez's puzzles; without resource constraints, there's more room for unoptimized or experimental solutions.

Of course my ultimate goal is still to run those lasers in parallel and get the job done in as few cycles as possible, but I love having the option to brute-force my way through and optimize later.

There is a flip-side to that openness, though -- later puzzles ramp up in difficulty not necessarily by requiring more cleverness, but by requiring more work. Complex molecule transformations take more hydrogen fiddling, more surgery to remove extra atoms, more shifting molecules around to position their numerous atoms for lasering...

It's certainly not to the absurd scale of Infinifactory's end-game bonus levels (where you had to build a whole damn space station out of single blocks), but the chemistry puzzles have already become intimidating enough that I'm ready to move on.

It doesn't help my motivation that, like TIS, this game drip-feeds a barely-there story.

I feel kinda bad for bailing on a Zachtronics game without finishing its main puzzles, and especially bad that I still haven't caught up to one of my Steam friends in the optimization leaderboards. That may haunt me enough that I need to return to the synthesizer someday. But for now, I'm satisfied with what I got out of Molek-Syntez.

Better than: Opus Magnum
Not as good as: SpaceChem
I would say, equitable to: TIS-100

Progress: Completed 17 puzzles.

A.N.N.E. is one of only two! remaining crowdfunded/early-access games that I've bought but am still waiting for. (Ref.: Early Access, Late Release)

And as of last month, the developer's plan was to hit feature-complete on May 20th. So it should come as no surprise that on May 20th the release plan was updated to "maybe never" (paraphrasing).

Considering the initial release estimate was in 2014, the shocking part is really that it took this long for him to give up. Like, I don't want to sound discouraging -- the dedication and persistence he's shown up until now is genuinely awesome. After years of waiting already, I never expected A.N.N.E. to come this close.

And it does exist in a playable form; which, given this dev update, is likely to be its final form. But "the creator still considers it unfinished" is a pretty big caveat to start a game with.

Back in March, after bouncing off of Baldur's Gate, I naturally gave a shot to its close friend Planescape: Torment. And I was pleasantly surprised -- while the former showed how far RPGs have come in the past two decades, the latter didn't feel nearly as dated.

Probably because it seems to be using the Infinity Engine as a storytelling vehicle - focusing on dialog and storytelling rather than on antiquated combat mechanics (and corresponding tutorials/ramp-up) - and because the writing quality of said story is actually pretty good! Torment did a better job of keeping my attention in its opening hour. But it was still kinda slow-moving, so I got distracted by Fallout 4 and upgraded my PC and took my sweet time circling back...

Which is how I've now discovered that, while Planescape: Torment EE "supports" Steam Cloud Saves, they're turned off by default. So, my hour of progress is gone forever.

This is just enough discouragement to prevent me from diving back in. Sure it would only take me an hour to get back to where I was, but if I'm only into it for the story anyway, I may as well read or watch it online.

On one hand, Pocket Kingdom is a welcome entry in the under-served "puzzlevania" sub-genre. It combines exploration-based storytelling and platform-puzzle mechanics in a semi-open world -- a rare pairing which I'd love to see more of.

On the other hand, this implementation leaves a lot to be desired. The story it tells is just a flimsy justification for some fantastical environments and mechanics - a threadbare example of a magical world trope - and its conversation-based exposition is more annoying than it is fascinating.

The open-world aspect of the game is hardly even worth mentioning, since the way forward is almost always a straight line. And if you do attempt to roam the map - like, if you mistakenly believe that there might be an alternate route to the next objective - attempting to backtrack through previously-solved puzzles is often a pain.

Meanwhile, although Pocket Kingdom's puzzles can get quite difficult, they aren't really satisfying to solve. Almost every puzzle is fundamentally about pushing and pulling blocks, to press buttons or stop lasers or create platforms; these mechanics don't significantly evolve over the course of the game. Even the scant few tools that you find later - a grappling hook, a rocket launcher - are still primarily about block-manipulation. (Also... you can't carry both of them at once!)

And despite Pocket Kingdom's relatively small scale, it frequently shows a distinct lack of polish -- like inconsistent menu controls, frustrating map navigation, overly repetitive background music, eye-crossing aesthetic choices...

... and at least one puzzle whose solution says a reward will come in a future patch. (It doesn't look like the game has been updated in a few years, so maybe don't hold your breath.)

Pocket Kingdom is generally playable, and definitely worth trying for fans of puzzles and interconnected world maps. But its world-building and puzzle variety, as well as its production values overall, are bluntly mediocre.

Better than: Qora
Not as good as: Toki Tori 2+
Definitely not as good as: Fez, The Witness (2016)

Progress: Got all the achievements, though I think there are still some items left.