Finally, a game from that charity bundle which I don't have to dismiss as "for a good cause."

The Turing Test is a Portal-alike, complete with first-person puzzles, a robot narrator, and a relatively-brief running length. What sets it apart from sub-genre peers like Q.U.B.E. and Quantum Conundrum - which felt a little like one-trick ponies falling into a rut - is that Turing continues to introduce new and exciting mechanics, and reveal interesting story twists, throughout that length.

Pacing is hard to get right, but it feels like The Turing Test pretty much nailed it. The game is split into seven chapters of ten puzzles each, with a significant story beat at the end of every chapter; while the game's plot is obviously building up to something, it has some twists up its sleeve up to the very end, and the dialog between protagonist Ava and AI overseer Tom invites some metaphysical curiosity inbetween those twists.

The puzzles, too, are well-paced within each chapter. Later puzzles are more complex than earlier ones but not dramatically so -- most chapters, rather than dialing up a pre-existing puzzle mechanic, introduce a new mechanic to build their puzzles around. Even the final chapter has a few "dunker" puzzles in it. No one chapter feels like a brain-bending slog, and puzzle designs are uniquely fresh all the way through.

My praise for The Turing Test isn't universal: one or two of its puzzles require some annoyingly-specific physics (the barely-perceptible "jump" shouldn't be a puzzle mechanic), one special puzzle requires outright prescience, and some of Tom's philosophical digressions feel awkwardly unprompted.

The biggest disappointment for me was that the game's supporting cast, and their background storytelling in written notes and audio recordings, are really under-polished: their voice acting is flat, the audio quality sucks, and some of the notes' fonts are unreadably blurry. It's to The Turing Test's credit that this category of narrative polish - not overall playability or core storytelling - was my primary issue.

It's a good puzzle game with engaging storytelling. It's no Cave Johnson, but it'll do!

Better than: Magrunner: Dark Pulse
Not as good as: Portal 2
Hard to say against the first Portal: Valve's humor and puzzles got more intricate, while Turing's story and mechanics showed more variety.

Six years later, thanks to that same charity bundle that's been getting me in such trouble recently, I finally bit the bullet on the Thief reboot. And it's roughly what I expected, more-or-less.

The "more" is Thief's overall aesthetic, which is satisfyingly moody and foreboding. I'll just assume that this team took extensive notes from Dishonored because Thief's art style nails that same "feel" of quasi-Victorian English malaise. (No small thanks to its embrace of literal darkness and shadows.) This does an admirable job of visually reinforcing the game's downtrodden-peasants and privileged-elite setting.

The "less" is the story, and the sense of freedom. Both of which I'd consider ... pretty important.

Thief's introduction expends significant time and effort setting up its plot, which is an unfortunately awkward mismatch of gritty realism and dark fantasy. Erin goes on and on about how being a thief is cool, and stealing is great, and the only thing that matters is theft, while Garrett just stands there and broods. The writing sometimes feels like a fan-fiction accompaniment to the 1998 original: so desperate to expand an existing franchise that it discards the very idea of subtlety.

And while Thief's city map might resemble an open-world sandbox, that resemblance is more lie than truth. For one thing, there are loading screens inbetween map sections, so -- it runs somewhat contrary to the spirit of "open world." And even within those sections, there's a disappointing lack of options or activity: only some surfaces allow you to clamber over debris, or climb a wall, or use a rope arrow. For all the traversal tools at Garrett's disposal, his opportunities to use them are depressingly few.

The rest of the game is exactly what I suspected it would be, back in 2014. You sneak, and you steal things, and that's it. The sneaking is less Metal Gear Solid or Splinter Cell, and more classic Hitman: while Thief indicates when you're in shadow versus light, and shows an alert level over the enemy's head, the difference between "maybe they see me" and "time to reload my save file" is borderline imperceptible.

As for the stealing, well... the lock-picking mechanic is annoying with a mouse, but otherwise theft is a straightforward loot-the-drawers affair. It's kind-of a funny follow-up to my recent experience in Fallout 4: while I'm all in for meticulously exploring a room and liberating its valuables, I still need some high-level motivation. Thief doesn't even unlock its equipment and ability upgrades until the second mission, and even then... really? So the cash value of a stolen item is a direct analog to experience points? This feels like a lazy justification for Erin's "stealing is great" attitude.

Thief is impressively well-polished in some areas, but utterly unsubstantial where it counts. I think there is some simple fun in here if you turn off your brain and don't mind Hitman-level amounts of stealth bullshit. But I really feel like, for everything this game tried to do, another game has already done it better.

Better than: Deus Ex: The Fall
Not as good as: Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Dishonored, Mark of the Ninja, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
And as far as thief-simulators go: Skyrim's Thieves Guild is easily more immersive and satisfying than this.

Progress: Met the Queen of Beggars.

Deus Ex: The Fall is exactly what I would expect from asking a mobile game studio to re-make Deus Ex: Human Revolution in the Unity engine with a minimal budget.

Everything about this game is "cheap." The animations and models are low-effort. The camera often clips into the environment. The UI art is flat and under-detailed. The writing is poorly-edited schlock, the voice acting is rote and dull. The inventory controls are a wreck, due to having crammed too many options into a touch-screen interface, and then haphazardly translating them back onto a keyboard. (Movement controls, at least, mostly work by simply duplicating the control scheme from Human Revolution and Mankind Divided.)

I didn't even get far enough in the game to see its Detroit- or Prague-equivalent hub area, but the internet tells me that I'm not missing much.

The game really set itself up for failure by attempting to imitate the full scope and complexity of a big-budget, high-resolution Deus Ex title. Not only because some of those mechanics map poorly to a mobile device - the aim-then-shoot control is ... yikes - but more because it was an obviously over-ambitious plan for such an under-funded project. This Unity-praising press piece, despite its promotional spin, shows off how many corners the team had to cut to crank this game out quickly and cheaply.

Some of Human Revolution's features should map perfectly to a mobile device, and even those - like the hacking minigame, or reading pocket secretaries - feel like low-rent knock-offs here.

This small-screen spin-off is clunky for a mobile game, and just plain bad for a PC game. Its resemblance to Human Revolution and Mankind Divided invites some intensely unfortunate comparisons to triple-A productions; The Fall is just like them, but, worse.

Better than: Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate
Not as good as: Cat Quest, Deus Ex: Human Revolution - The Missing Link (or even Alpha Protocol)
As with Just Cause 3: I didn't expect much, but at least it was for a good cause.

Progress: Gave up after I fell through the map in the first mission.

Rise & Shine makes its purpose, arcade action, clear from the beginning: its throwaway, self-parodying story about video game tropes is dumb and meaningless filler between shooting (and ... some puzzling).

The problem with its action (and ... puzzle) sequences is that I hate the aiming controls. It's a twin-stick shooter with too much zoom distance and not enough aim sighting -- that is to say, I end up spamming the trigger button because it's so unclear where my shots will land.

And the worst part is that combat (... and puzzles!) often relies on a fly-by-wire mechanic which just sucks. Controlling the flying bullet is like a runner, or a dodge-em-up, plus you have to start over if the bullet leaves a special area, plus you're being shot at and really can't dodge while aiming.

This is on top of classic arcade punishment like one-hit kills (why do I even have a health bar?) and phased boss encounters where death puts you back at phase one.

If the story was even remotely interesting, I might put up with dying-and-retrying my way through it. But it isn't, so I won't.

Progress: Died and gave up at the intro boss.

"Isn't good enough" is how I most recently summarized Just Cause 2, and I really can't come up with a better overview for Just Cause 3.

The traversal mechanics are kind-of neat, grapple-pulling and parachuting around; but neutered, in comparison to similar grappling concepts from Batman: Arkham City or Marvel's Spider-Man -- due to this game's lack of tall buildings. Its proclivity for explosiveness is cool, but not as dense, or strategic, as The Saboteur's. The variety of guns is somewhat impressive, but well short of the armory in Red Faction: Guerrilla (and the controls still aren't responsive or intuitive enough). The story is flippantly nonsense, but not in the fun way that Saints Row embraces so well.

The "point," to me, is demonstrated in its liberation system: blow up all the items of interest in an enemy stronghold, so that the rebels can overtake it. But some of these items are bizarrely small, effectively hidden; and until you find and destroy them all, enemies will continue swarming the area. Then, once you've finally destroyed the last widget, a switch immediately flips and the enemies are replaced by allies. This is a primary - maybe the primary - gameplay loop, yet it plays like a hidden-object game and completing it has no dramatic or satisfying payoff.

Just Cause 3's checklist of content and features is impressive, and its execution has improved since the preceding game, but it still doesn't measure up to its sandbox competitors; even ones that were released 5 or more years earlier.

Better than: Just Cause 2
Not as good as: Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, or any of the other games I name-checked.
It's not like I expected anything different: but, hey, it's for charity right?

Progress: Unlocked fast travel.

Making a "walking simulator" is an inherently risky proposition. I mean, sure, you can save a lot of development time by forcing the player down a specific path and not having to design or implement gameplay -- but those savings can come back to bite you if the game's remaining components, its story and presentation, aren't strong enough on their own.

So it is with Last Day of June, which not only has a total lack of narration and an underwhelming art style - its characters' child-like proportions, and empty eye sockets, are more haunting than charming - but lazily trots out an overused "tragic car accident" plot. (Like Dear Esther, but in third-person!)

At least, that's what it seemed like in the first 20 minutes. The game moves so slowly and is so melancholically boring that I just didn't care to continue with it.

Manual Samuel isn't completely awful, but it sure tries its hardest.

That's the thing -- Manual Samuel is trying to piss you off. Like QWOP, the frustration inherent in its basic controls is "the point." But Manual Samuel takes it a step further: you're not just required to carefully time your walking to avoid falling down, you must also regularly press the blink button, and the breathe-in button, and the breathe-out button! And, whenever Samuel happens to slouch over, the straighten-spine button!

Some kudos must go to whoever figured out the button mappings that make all this possible, even if only barely so. On their own, the designs of this game's complex-but-accessible coordination challenges - from a drink-coffee minigame, to stick-shift driving - are somewhat impressive.

But having to move from one challenge to the next while continuing to breathe and blink is a real test of your patience, and when the game's timing requirements start to get tight, the endlessness of these micro-frustrations is just ... ugh. The feeling of futility, that just existing takes so much effort, is very demotivating.

There's no external motivation from the game's story or presentation, either. The plot is intentionally absurd and incoherent, the art and voice acting are low-quality, and the dialog's attempts at humor are kinda annoying. The "joke" of Death being a delinquent skateboarder wore out pretty quickly.

That Manual Samuel has working gameplay at all is slightly praiseworthy; but it isn't fun to play, and I don't care enough about Sam's story to see it through.

Better than: Pinstripe
Not as good as: Snake Pass
I can die happy: if I never hear the self-censored phrase "holy feces" again.

Progress: Chapter 7, fought some robots before giving up.

The core action gameplay of Strider (2014) is mostly solid, but a few fatal flaws make it more frustrating than its vacant story is worth.

First off: this is a bad example of a Metroidvania (more so than Headlander was). The world map is large and interconnected, but your path through it is almost entirely linear. Occasions to stray from the beaten path are rare -- there are optional upgrades for e.g. health, but not very many. Often, the game uses one-way obstacles - sometimes even re-locking an open door! - to prevent you from backtracking and force you toward the current objective.

I'd overlook the strict linearity if those objectives were narratively compelling, but they're nothing more than a series of techno-babble macguffins, serving the transparent purpose of taking you from one end of the map to the other. The story is bare as if to pay homage to the original NES game: it starts with zero explanation, there are almost no named characters (other than bosses), and even though I'm halfway through the game, I still don't know what the protagonist's motivation is.

Strider clearly doesn't care about storytelling, and wants you to enjoy the action for its own sake. And while its sword-slicing and -dicing is fun when it works, the game commits more than enough cardinal sins to dull its appeal:

• Checkpoint placement is both infrequent and unclear; death will often result in a surprising amount of re-treading.
• Cutscenes are unskippable, even (especially) the ones that precede boss fights, which you'll have to watch over and over again on every attempt.
• Bosses, and even some regular enemies, have an annoying tendency to effectively trap you with attacks that knock you back then fire again as soon as you're up; or bullet-hell-like attacks that feel like they come out of nowhere.
• And the controls just aren't quite tight enough to satisfy Strider's high-action ambitions. Specifically, running and ducking are both controlled by the left analog stick, and it's frustratingly easy to accidentally trigger the duck, immediately stopping in place.

Really, this feels like a decades-old no-frills action game with a nice coat of paint and some under-baked features tacked onto it. On balance, the action is "okay," but the rest of the game is simply not interesting enough to keep me going.

Better than: Forma.8
Not as good as: Gato Roboto
And in the "embarrassing technical issue" department: I had to play on my old PC, because my new build has too many CPU cores!?

Progress: the "Black Marketer" told me to destroy the "Gravitron" to access the "Temple."

Headlander is an imperfect game with some strong core mechanics and a fun gameplay loop -- which is about as much praise as I've given any game in the last 2-3 months.

It's an action-adventure game with an interconnected world map, i.e. a Metroidvania, although it isn't an excellent example of the genre; the campaign's critical path rarely involves revisiting a previous area. But it nails the sense of exploration that comes from filling-in a map grid, and the undirected freedom of scouring that grid for overlooked doors and missing upgrades.

Likewise, the upgrade mechanics weren't terribly compelling for their own sake; I used almost none of the extra abilities I unlocked, hell I couldn't even tell you how they were activated. (Headlander gets 50 DKP minus for showing PlayStation button icons in the UI while I was using an Xbox One controller.) But passive enhancements like health and charge time got me interested in the upgrade system, and my compulsion to "collect 'em all" filled in the rest.

I didn't follow the story all that well; I think it had something to do with transhumanism? Most of the campaign didn't focus on its main plot, opting instead to surprise me with random, zany directions like -- hey it's a 1970s disco lounge in space! but now we're in a giant game of battle-chess. oh, and now there are NPCs who give sidequests? but who cares, we're going to a new world map, on the moon! However, that lack of focus didn't really feel like a negative, because I kept looking forward to whatever insane thing the game might throw at me next.

Critically, although Headlander's central combat mechanics had a bit of a learning curve - getting the "vacuum a robot's head off" balance just right took some practice - they ended up being fun throughout the game's 6-hour running length. This was, in no small part, thanks to the satisfying "pop" sound that robot heads made when they detached.

Headlander's overall style, its tubular soundtrack and retro-futuristic visual effects and mostly-humorous voice-overs, comes together really well. It never takes itself too seriously, which is perfect for its manic story direction and somewhat-unsophisticated ability upgrades.

You're a floating head who possesses robots with laser guns, and everything else is pretty much gravy on top of that.

Better than: Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight, Stacking
Not as good as: Indivisible
Roughly on par with: Timespinner, plus-or-minus that game's seriousness vs. this game's lack thereof.

Progress: 100% map and upgrade completion.

After finally limping through Fallout 4 (and especially Nuka World), I felt like playing something completely different. Something with a gripping adventure story, simple mechanics, pleasant visuals, a short running-length; and to be safe, something I'd played before. My memory of Prince of Persia (2008) fit that bill perfectly -- but unfortunately, my memory didn't age very well.

A decade ago, I was in love with the game's "optional dialog sequences." Today, they feel more like cutscenes that you need to keep pressing a button for. Some of the dialog is vitally informative to Prince's and Elika's character building; so why is it optional? And the rest are throwaway lines that feel like a waste of my button-presses.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune was released the year before PoP 2008, and the following ten years of Uncharted games more than proved Naughty Dog's concept of mixing banter with parkour in real-time. If this game was made just a year later, I'm sure they would have done the same; now, the optional cutscenes - which still interrupt gameplay - feel like a big step back. (And Nolan North's wry voice acting keeps inviting the comparison.)

The combat is stupid. I tolerated it back then, and I can barely put up with it today. Maybe, back in 2008, the movement and ability controls were like a breath of fresh air compared to Sands of Time and its sequels; but now, it's really nothing special. Now, I can't help but focus on the aggravating timing quirks - like when I successfully parry an enemy attack, but then it attacks again immediately, anyway - and how disruptive and time-wasting the "we're at the edge, better turn around!" animations become. Especially for the Warrior boss, who needs to be corralled to a specific spot and moves ... so ... slowly.

And while, in theory, gathering light seeds via explorational parkour is a highlight of the game; in my replay, I dreaded the backtracking involved in collecting more glowing bits. Maybe it's a consequence of the environment art no longer holding my interest -- I just didn't look forward to going off in new directions, or finding new obstacles to overcome. I only wanted to make progress in the story, and the light seed requirements to do so felt like a pretty artificial hurdle.

That story, by the way, isn't compelling on its own. But this was true back in 2008, too. And... can you believe that the PC version still doesn't have the Epilogue DLC that picks up after the main game's abrupt, borderline-cliffhanger ending? (Well, sure, I can believe it. But I feel like I shouldn't.)

The years haven't been kind to our prince. I'll admit that I still have a soft spot for the idea of wall-running and jumping through canyons to save ancient kingdoms from evil magic; but in retrospect, it's clear that a lot of this game's appeal was in its newness, and how pretty it looked. The mechanical sophistication and graphical horsepower of today's games make PoP look relatively sloppy.

I hope that, someday, someone figures out how to properly revive this series. A man can dream...

Better than: RiME
Not as good as: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (NGC, PC, PS2, PS3, XBOX), whose storytelling, at least, still holds up.
Oh hey, remember the demo for: Raji: An Ancient Epic? Not holding my breath, but, there's a chance!

Progress: Barely more light seeds than were absolutely required.