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).

Back in 2018 I said that I was "really not interested in replaying" Red Spider: Vengeance, and that leaves me in an awkward, confusing spot with its prequel Red Spider 2: Exiled. Because the opening minutes of this game are filled with character names and relationship references that I don't remember anymore.

Like, I remember that "Fatso" was a person in the first game. Was he a good person or a bad person? Was Lau supposed to be a crime lord, or big-wig in the police ... or a dirty cop?

It feels a lot like Red Spider 2 takes that pre-existing character knowledge for granted, because after only a few minutes I was totally lost. I didn't know which lines of dialog were moving the plot forward, and which were lies from a character covering his tracks. I didn't know what the plot relevancy and stakes were when someone referred to another character or a family name.

I'm not saying it's a bad story, but it is badly introduced, and failed to hook me 'cause it made no effort to re-familiarize me with its setting.

Progress: about 10 minutes.

Grapple Force Rena is an odd combination of old and new. Its core grappling-hook mechanic is pretty cool in action, while also feeling "simple" in a way that may actually have worked in a Sega Genesis game. Its flavor text is fun and irreverent, without dominating the flow of the game.

Sadly, that flow is also "simple" enough to be at home in a 20-year-old game. Aside from the grappling, there isn't much gameplay going on in here; that's Rena's only attack move. Enemies have some varied patterns, but are universally dumb and easy to out-wit. The levels feel too maze-like, and there's no map.

Then there's the game's soundtrack, whose instruments sound suspiciously familiar to Genesis chiptunes. And in the demo's third level, I could grapple Rena to attach to a lady with a jetpack, then fly around -- no, not just like when Tails flies with Sonic. This is a jetpack. Totally different.

Grapple Force Rena doesn't just feel overly simplistic, it feels overly attached to mechanics and constraints of a bygone era. I guess I can appreciate the intent for nostalgia, but aping decades-old games isn't a substitute for contemporary design (like a map!).

Progress: Played the first three demo levels.

Yoku's Island Express is a charming, pretty, and mechanically-solid spin on the Metroidvania concept. Actually, a more direct comparison would be Toki Tori 2+, as this is a similarly open and interconnected map of puzzles to solve.

The difference is that Yoku's Island is full of pinball puzzles.

It's a really neat idea. And the seamless thematic integration of Yoku's dung-beetle rolling ball with the game map's pinball mazes feels great.

If I wasn't so terrible at pinball, I would probably love this. Unfortunately, I just can't flip flippers with the physics precision necessary to make this mechanic fun.

Progress: Finished the demo.

Hold it! Has it really been almost fifteen years since Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (NDS) first showed me how fun the law could be?

The Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy package presented a surprising, and exciting, opportunity for me to revisit all those fondly-remembered cases from early in Phoenix's career. More recent installments like Spirit of Justice have made me wonder, are the original games really as good as I remember?

So far, the answer is... mostly. I remembered there were some frustrating instances of dialog-tree "pixel hunting" in Phoenix's early cases, so running into those hurdles again wasn't too disappointing -- but I had forgotten how inconvenient the out-of-court sequences could be to navigate, sometimes taking five or more click-throughs to get to a particular scene.

Most importantly, though, the writing of Ace Attorney's characters and plots feels like it's aged just fine. At least to me, the balance between "mystery-solving realism" and "bizarre cartoon humor" still seems good. (Granted, I may still be biased by nostalgia.)

As for the trilogy collection's visual facelift, it's a bit mixed. At its best, the new high-resolution art is a solid match for my rose-tinted memory of what the DS games "might have" looked like. Occasionally, though, a character will have awkward shading on their face or a weird mouth shape, and watching them talk doesn't ... totally look right.

It's not so bad that it distracts from the still-great storytelling and case-solving, though. And even when I'm replaying a scene that I still remember vividly from 10-15 years ago, becoming re-acquainted with Phoenix's friends and stories is a joy.

Progress: Finished episode 1 of Justice for All

Transformers: Devastation starts strong, with a gorgeous cartoon aesthetic, flashy character introductions, and Peter Cullen's commanding voice. The fighting action is tightly-crafted, but still approachable and easy to learn. Its narrative points move quickly, from one fast and focused encounter to the next; and it even has some optional, non-linear objectives to encourage a little map exploration.

This first chapter of the game is really promising, despite how completely dumb the plot is. Getting to listen to "the Transformers sound effect" more than makes up for that. But unfortunately, as the game marches forward, its early luster starts to fade.

Initially, the game decides which character you play as, for each particular mission; then, after the main cast has been introduced, you get to choose which one to play. The catch is that the 'bots gain experience points from fighting, so whichever characters you aren't choosing will gradually become more and more under-leveled and underpowered. So I guess I'm just Bumblebee forever, then.

Well, there is an intricate equipment and upgrade and currency/shop system which can help build a bot's experience level ... I think. These menus and options suddenly appeared after the game's first chapter, with little explanation as to how to use them effectively. It was kind of bizarre, the amount of complication that just spontaneously appeared all at once.

I did sell a bunch of unwanted weapon drops - oh yeah, enemies drop ... various items, of dubious utility - to earn robot-points and purchase additional abilities. And I don't think I ever used any of those abilities.

The combat doesn't really evolve after that first chapter. Once I learned how to read visual hints for dodge timing, how to effectively chain attacks in a combo, and how to use vehicle mode to take down enemy defenses -- every fight the game threw at me felt very familiar. Whether I was fighting fast-moving jet 'bots, swarms of insecticons, or a big hulking multi-bot boss, the tactics never really changed much.

And the dumb-as-a-dinobot story doesn't help later missions feel engaging or compelling at all. Even the optional text diary pick-ups that fleshed out the background of "the core" were dull and uninteresting. Just keep following that macguffin, Autobots.

I really, really enjoyed the presentation and gameplay of Transformers: Devastation in the beginning; but several missions in, I just became bored. It would have been great to see more mechanical depth in progressive fights, or to see more self-directed experimentation with the first chapter's open-world-ish map.

But it felt like, after Chapter 1, the wheels came off this game and it just kinda laid there.

Better than: Transformers: War for Cybertron
Not as good as: Ōkami HD
Basically as good as: Vanquish

Progress: Finished Chapter ... 4, I think?

NITE Team 4 scores points on its "hacking game" contemporaries for being, as far as I've seen, the most realistic simulator of practical cyber offense.

It names and refers to real, relevent software packages like Apache, Exchange, and phpBB; its invented hacking utilities are (explicitly) based on real tools like Metasploit; it even refers to real-life data breaches as sources for dictionary attacks. Sure, some aspects of its remote exploitation tools are a little oversimplified, but not in a way that feels like insipid technobabble. The real-world explanations for everything help the game world feel pretty immersive and intriguing.

But... they're not quite enough to save NITE Team 4 from two critical problems of execution.

The first is the game's UI, which is more confusing to browse than it should be - where are the navigation breadcrumbs? where's the indicator of currently-running tasks? - and clutters the virtual desktop with a new terminal window for each "kind" of tool. Like, what? Why isn't "new window" left up to me?

And the second is the game's sometimes-ambiguous objectives. Like the worst kinds of point-and-click adventure games, NITE Team 4 will occasionally have a goal that doesn't feel like a match for the tools you have, until you randomly decide to try using a monkey as a wrench. Which feels less like a puzzle, and more like a trick.

I'm really happy with the realistic world-building in its premise, but at the end of the day, NITE Team 4 can be just as frustrating to play as other hacking simulators tend to.

Progress: Finished the demo.