Battle Chef Brigade is a peculiar mix: part side-scrolling action/combat game, part puzzle game, and part fantasy adventure where fates are decided by Iron Chef style cooking competitions. Fight monsters, cook their parts into a meal, and win chef battles to earn your way into the noble Brigade!

Taken separately, each part of Battle Chef Brigade isn't very good. The action game is shallow and button-mashy, since advanced techniques like magic aren't as efficient as regular attacks; the puzzle game is mechanically straightforward, yet still impenetrable in some key ways (like balancing a dual-element objective); and the adventure game has significant pacing issues, as key story threads sometimes disappear and reappear by surprise.

But the game is absolutely greater than the sum of its parts. The time limit for a chef battle makes fighting monsters and finding good parts feel more tense, and various twists to the puzzle mechanics (like pans and kettles with different effects) keep the color-matching interesting even after dozens of battles.

And, especially, the poorly-paced story is nonetheless highly entertaining thanks to an evocative art style, surprisingly-excellent voice acting, and some great writing. Both light-hearted and heart-wrenching moments make the game's characters feel charming and real.

While elements of Battle Chef Brigade may appear familiar, the package as a whole is definitely unique, and also a treat to play -- if a bit over-long by the end.

Some extra tutorialization around how a dish's score is calculated, and some more depth in the monster-fighting action, could make a really impressive sequel.

Better than: most beat-em-up, match-three, or cooking games.
Not as good as: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy
It's hard: to find other games with meaningful comparisons.

As a promotional tool, Borderlands 2: Commander Lilith and the Fight for Sanctuary isn't bad; it's perfectly playable and has some fun moments. As a game, though, it's fairly bland and feels unnecessary to the franchise.

The Fight for Sanctuary picks up after the events of both Borderlands 2 and Tales from the Borderlands, explicitly to set the stage for the upcoming Borderlands 3. But it doesn't do a hell of a lot of foreshadowing for the next game -- and it doesn't have much story of its own to tell, either. Mostly, this DLC is a recap to reacquaint years-lapsed Borderlands players with Pandora's wacky cast of characters.

And while it's fun to watch Tiny Tina fangirl out about a big missile, the cast overall is glossed over pretty quickly. Between Lilith, Mordecai, Brick, Vaughn, Moxxi, Ellie (sorry Scooter), Mordecai's new pet Talon, Tina, Dr. Zed, Marcus, Crazy Earl... most characters only have about a minute of screen-time, and barely get past re-introducing themselves.

Vaughn comes the closest to providing real entertainment, with some bandit-ey mission text and radio banter, but he falls short of Shade from Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate's Booty. Even this DLC's antagonist is a flat villain with minimal (and uninteresting) backstory, and ultimately defeating him isn't very satisfying.

Something that this DLC does execute well is a new item rarity, the "effervescent" tier. Like Legendary items, these are more scripted than random, and their effects are bonkers -- like an assault rifle that shoots 10 bullets at once, or an SMG that you can throw away as it spins and shoots in all directions. Effervescent items are also crazy-sparkley, which is a very cool visual effect.

So, I look forward to more effervescent items in the late game of Borderlands 3.

That said, while this DLC pack isn't "bad," it doesn't really feel worthwhile either. The whole thing could have been replaced with a 15-second cutscene in the beginning of the next game.

Better than: Borderlands 2: How Marcus Saved Mercenary Day
Not as good as: Borderlands 2: The Horrible Hunger of the Ravenous Wattle Gobbler
Oh yeah: where's Torgue!? He'd better be coming back!

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night starts out rough. Primarily, I would say, because you start the game with no combat or mobility techniques and it's quite a while before interesting abilities show up.

Let me set the stage a bit. Bloodstained is a spiritual sucessor to Koji Igarashi's Castlevania games, from Symphony of the Night through Order of Ecclesia. Mechanically, Bloodstained is most like the Aria/Dawn of Sorrow installments -- except, instead of collecting enemy "souls" to learn their powers, you collect enemy "shards" to learn their powers. (Yeah they are the same thing.)

There's no Dracula in this game, but there is an ostentatious villain who dresses a lot like a vampire. And he's summoned a sprawling, magical, maze-like castle from hell that serves as a headquarters for his army of demon invaders. ... It's not subtle.

(That isn't the villain. That's some other vampire.)

Even the composer is a Castlevania alum. And that's very aurally evident in the theme and quality of Bloodstained's soundtrack; all that's missing is a track called "VAMPIRE KILLER."

Bloodstained is so much like those Castlevania games that it hardly merits further explanation. It replicates the same empowerment arc through experience points, weapon drops and crafting, soul- er, shard powers, Metroid-style upgrades that unlock new areas ... and the sense of achievement that comes from defeating bigger and badder enemies with your newfound strength.

It's a shame, then, that Bloodstained doesn't give you enough power to start with. In the early game, you can't jump very high; walking is slow; and none of the available shard powers elevate combat beyond a simple "slash enemy then move away" routine. It was about two hours until I'd made enough progress to change any of that. Until new abilities arrived, unlocking new areas and spicing up the combat, there just weren't enough options to keep the gameplay interesting, and journeys from one safe-room to another felt like a chore.

Also, the game's opening moments insist on verbosely explaining and re-explaining the plot to you through dull character interactions. The premise - alchemists opened a portal to hell - isn't bad on its own, but the written dialog is ... well, it's reminiscent of Symphony of the Night's infamously bad localization. And with the happy exception of protagonist Miriam, Bloodstained's voice cast sounds almost as awkward and unenthused as PS1-era voice acting did.

So like I was saying: it starts out rough.

But Bloodstained does, after a few hours, get over these humps of lackluster gameplay options and clumsy storytelling; and then the "magic" comes back in full force. Like the best Igavanias, when all its cylinders are firing, Bloodstained delivers rich and varied opportunities to make progress -- exploring the map, collecting items, leveling up, and occasionally discovering fun secrets.

It almost always feels like you're accomplishing something, even if only in small increments, toward the ultimate goal of overpowering evil. Bloodstained is at its best when it's giving you plenty of opportunities for continuous improvement. (And when it sets the story aside for some Castlevania references or other light-hearted fun.)

... and then there are a few points where Bloodstained stumbles along its critical path. Like, I totally admire when bonus content is unlocked by using a random-seeming ability in a special area. But it feels obnoxious when such a secret is smack in the middle of the main storyline. Needing a random-drop shard ability to dive underwater, or needing a hidden piece of equipment to get past an environmental hazard, before the next story beat shows itself; these moments feel pretty archaic.

And that's why, despite how enthralling the game can be, it's hard to think of Bloodstained as more than a reboot of 15-year-old Castlevanias. Clearly the formula is still relevant; but the familiar setting and obscure obstacles also make it feel stuck in the past.

I had a blast in Bloodstained's castle, in fact I'm continuing to enjoy being an obsessive completionist about it. And, hell, I'd definitely play another game just like it with little hesitation.

But Igarashi could learn a thing or two by looking at games other than his own for inspiration. More recent Metroidvanias like Dust: An Elysian Tail, Guacamelee, Ori and the Blind Forest, Timespinner, even Toki Tori 2+ have iterated on IGA's legacy; the master could learn some new tricks from these students.

Better than: Timespinner in terms of breadth and depth of content.
Not as good as: Timespinner in terms of modern trappings (not leaving me totally lost mid-story).
Some more bugfixing would also have been nice: fortunately I wasn't caught by this progression blocker, but I did have to reload on this pause menu soft-lock multiple times.

One of my biggest complaints about Hacknet - just yesterday - was how crowded the network node-map became. So you may imagine my delight when, a few missions into the Labyrinths DLC, I was given a new utility to auto-organize the map. Praise Dijkstra!

This critical UI enhancement is only one of a few ways that Labyrinths improves upon the original game. There are some new tools that make network exploration more interesting (recovering data from memory snapshots!), there are new security mechanics to puzzle around (connection whitelists!), and even the storytelling feels more immersive and thrilling than before.

The missions in Labyrinths come from a group of NPCs who hang out in an IRC server, like in Hackmud. Much more so than simply reading an NPC's email, watching these characters type out the story line-by-line lends a sense of urgency to in-game events; and begins to show some relatable personalities. If there's more Hacknet in the future, I'd be very excited to see more character-chatting.

Hacket: Labyrinths still doesn't check all of my "ideal hacking-game" boxes, but gets yet-closer than Hacknet did. Really, my biggest disappointment with it is that it's relatively short. More, please!

Better than: Hacknet
Not as good as: if you could somehow combine this game's usability and motif with NITE Team 4's realistic technobabble.
Apparently I missed: a "getting hacked" moment, because I stopped it from getting too far. I read about it later and this puzzle sounds super-cool.

The Breath of the Wild sequel looks exciting, and the No More Heroes III reveal was a pleasant shock (please, please don't suck).

But for me, the most surprising E3 announcement was Spiritfarer, a game where you explore the world in a boat, build a miniature town, and have a pet cat. What I realized watching this trailer is that those three things - exploring, building, cat - are like ... my top three most-wanted game features. And I don't think they've all come together before.

(Keanu was great, but, no, the fact that Cyberpunk 2077 is hyped-as-shit is not a surprise. I know that it's going to be awesome.)

As a programmer, sysadmin, typist, and puzzle enthusiast, I have some vivid expectations for the ideal "hacking" game. Hacknet isn't it; but it's the closest I've seen yet.

Hacknet isn't as realistic as NITE Team 4, hand-waving gameplay concepts like local executables running on remote machines; remote code execution requiring cracks on multiple outward-facing services; or notes that use "megabytes" of memory for each line of text (the memory usage is really a thin metaphor for screen space).

But after the tutorial, the game does a good job of glossing over its shaky technobabble, and quickly dives into reading emails, browsing web boards, and exploring filesystems. And those things felt pretty real. By the game's end I'd mostly forgotten its bizarre architectural idiosyncrasies (well, except for text-note memory).

Unlike many other hacking games, Hacknet doesn't have an upgrade path for your machine, so you can't scale up to running cracks faster or using more of them simultaneously. I was dubious about this at first, but the simplicity really works to Hacknet's benefit: I was never insufficiently equipped for a challenge, and I never got distracted from hacking by watching a currency wallet.

Hacknet's UI isn't perfect, but gets the job done. It stands out that a few controls require clicking, and a few others require typing -- because most controls are both clickable and keyboard-able. Nice! (Having both graphical and text interfaces to all commands is in my "ideal" hacking game vision.)

Hands-down, the worst part of the UI is its node-map of discovered servers, which is impossible to organize and also way too small and crowded. Nodes can partially overlap other nodes, so, that's kinda bad. This would be worse if Hacknet's quests had more backtracking and made you search for long-forgotten connections, but since they usually just throw you at newly-discovered nodes, this UI element is merely an occasional annoyance.

An aspect that Hacknet actually nails, I think, is its balance between nerd culture and drama. Granted, the core story isn't very elaborate; but it's well-paced, following a technological plot without getting lost in the technical details. And it leaves plenty of freely-discoverable files that flesh out the world and its sense of humor, like audio diaries in text form, to be consumed or ignored as one sees fit.

Overall, Hacknet is good enough. The immersiveness is imperfect, the UI is just fine, and the puzzles aren't very ambitious - I was disappointed that the Decypher tool didn't require reverse-engineering its C# algorithm - but everything works moderately well, and it succeeds at stringing together objectives to be compelling, and fun.

Better than: Hacker Evolution, Hackmud, NITE Team 4 (the demo at least), Uplink
Not as good as: my perfect hacking game. ... maybe someday.
The internet-culture humor was amusing: but surely there are more sources than just bash.org? There have to be, right? (Maybe not.)

The now-archaic map navigation, the sometimes-confounding evidence solutions, the frustrating penalty/reload-savefile system, and the typos ... are no match for the intrigue, excitement, and charm of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy's later cases.

The Trials and Tribulations cases come out swinging with backstory-establishing flashbacks, building up to a final case that ties everything together in a bombastic and incredibly satisfying conclusion. The hours flew by as I was unable to tear myself away from reading, and clicking, through Phoenix's most thrilling case yet.

But even the Ace Attorney gang's most dire moments are punctuated by a certain light-heartedness. Man, the localization staff sure did have fun with these games.

Though I've only just closed the final case, and already miss Phoenix and the Feys; replaying Wright's early years is definitely more "sweet" than "bitter." I'm so happy that I got the chance to reacquaint myself with these long-past characters and cases.

And at the same time, I eagerly look forward to more Ace Attorney on PC. Come on, Apollo! Everything is going to be fine!

Better than: Analogue: A Hate Story
Not as good as: ... you know what, nostalgia aside, I do look forward to the "real" puzzle gameplay in the Apollo Justice, Dual Destinies, and Spirit of Justice installments.
Come on, Capcom!: Just give me the chance to re-purchase more DS and 3DS games. I'm game if you are.

Moving forward in the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy collection shows incremental mechanical improvements (the psyche-locks in investigation phases), and highlights lingering mechanical shortcomings (navigating a map with more than four destinations) -- but mostly reinforces that the strength of these games isn't mechanical.

It's the quality of the writing and localization that makes Phoenix Wright's cast of wacky characters so engaging and entertaining. More than merely a vehicle for cartoony comic relief...

... Phoenix's stories build drama, in our attachments to their characters, that gives real gravitas to the dire situations they face in court.

Much of the credit has to go to the original localization staff. It would be easy for a straightforward translation to unintentionally ruin a character's personality; but the consistency with which we can "see" characters like Maya, Gumshoe, and Phoenix himself, as they deal with personal and professional crises, makes them feel real.

(And it's clear that the localizers had fun, too.)

It's the "real"-ness of their characters - and the music, of course the music, which I still regularly listen to - that makes the Ace Attorney stories resonate so strongly. Even as 10+ years of distance makes me forget the details of solving cases... I still fondly remember some of their biggest moments, and seeing them again is a real treat.

Progress: Finished episode 2 of Trials and Tribulations

Not many 20-minute-long games impress me, but What Never Was did.

It takes place in a single room, and there are only three puzzles. But! It strikes an excellent balance between environmental storytelling and gameplay pacing.

The puzzles felt organically integrated into the story's easy-to-understand premise, the interactive elements tantalized me with their background-story flavor text, and the ending - while abrupt - was a really intriguing teaser for whatever follow-up the developer has in mind.

(I did skip through much of the spoken dialog while reading through the subtitles. So maybe the writing was a bit wordy.)

This little freely-downloadable passion project shows incredible potential for a full-fledged puzzle adventure game.

Better than: The Room (the puzzle game, not the cinematic masterpiece)
Not as good as: Mandagon
Less content than, but arguably on quality par with: Gone Home

Cube Escape: Paradox is a weird, spooky, inventive, and mostly satisfying convergence of point-and-click adventure games and an escape-room puzzle.

Its creepy atmosphere is thoroughly executed, between scattered and mysterious symbols, the crow-headed dude in the painting, and moody background music. I would argue, though, that it uses too many jump-scare moments; especially since they're fairly neutral on the "scary" scale -- really just sudden, startling movements.

The puzzles are good! There are some hidden objects to find, some obtuse hints to decipher, some logical dots to connect. Some of the puzzle types are really clever - plotting a route on the globe/map is one I found really memorable - and I was impressed at how well the game re-used its tools (like the typewriter or the TV set) in new and creative ways.

Unfortunately, there were one or two clear examples of "adventure game logic" that turned me off a little bit. Like, you must combine some items by looking at yourself holding them in the mirror. Huh? And occasionally there's no clear connection between a puzzle's solution and your "next step" -- after finishing a puzzle, you just have to search around the room for something that wasn't there before.

It's also a bit worrying that Chapter 1's ending suggests Chapter 2 still takes place in the same room setting. While I appreciate the variety of puzzles that were packed into that room so far, by the end of the chapter I felt pretty "over" it. The prospect of investigating the room yet again feels like it would be a chore.

The first chapter of Cube Escape: Paradox was a neat diversion, and I'm really glad that I tried it out. But I didn't enjoy it quite enough to go paying for more.

Better than: Puzzle Agent
Not as good as: Oxenfree
Thematically distinct from, but arguably on par with: Detective Grimoire

Progress: finished Chapter 1 (the free part).