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.

First off: great name. A+ there.

Second: The Textorcist has a really slick presentation, with crisp art and a pulse-pounding soundtrack. The quality of the game's English is - ironically - a bit lacking, and the dialog scenes feel a little extravagant and unnecessary, but they look and sound good enough to put up with.

The real "meat" of the game, though, is the combat -- a bullet-hell game crossed with a typing game. Think Sine Mora meets Epistory, or something like Time Crisis plus Typing of the Dead. It's certainly not a genre mash-up I've seen before, and the way that it feeds back into the game's theme (reading prayers to exorcise demons!) is very thematically satisfying.

The problem is... it's too hard. I just can't coordinate bullet-dodging and typing at the same time. Maybe I'm supposed to be better at the bullet-hell part, and more strategic about the typing part? All I know is that I get hit a lot, interrupting my typing; it feels to me like the two core mechanics work against each other too much.

Actually reminds me a lot of my time with The World Ends with You. There's just too much going on at once for me to keep up with.

I'm really impressed by The Textorcist's design, but didn't end up having much fun playing it.

Progress: Got to the gang/club leader, in the demo.

After the first one, Mario Party never really entered into my regular gaming activities. I'd try one installment or another, here and there, and the formula seemed pretty consistent: a turn-based version of the random and rubber-band-ey bullshit from Mario Kart.

(Except when Mario Party 9 and 10 did the "everyone moves in the car" thing. That was dumb.)

Super Mario Party is no different. There's a new "ally" mechanic which is kinda neat, adding a little strategy to dice selection; and there are some extra modes like a rhythm game, for some reason; but at its core, it's the same formula from 20 years ago.

And I wouldn't call that a bad thing, really. The minigames are fun enough -- and more importantly, there are enough of them to keep the game feeling fresh over a long session. And, as long as you don't care too much about winning, watching that aforementioned "random and rubber-band-ey bullshit" play out makes for a good time.

It may not have the same opportunity for wicked creativity as a Jackbox, but Super Mario Party is nevertheless a fun way to dick around with your friends.

Crackdown 3 isn't terrible.

Okay, maybe that's a little too reductive. But it's really not difficult to sum up Crackdown 3 in a few words. For instance, these words: it's a sequel to Crackdown.

No, I mean, that's really all you need to know.

Let me quote some of my previously-posted thoughts on Crackdown, written ten years ago:

• "This is a sandbox game where you can become a supercop that leaps over buildings, and tosses SUVs at gang members."
• "... there's (almost) never a dull moment."
• "... the fun of exploring the city, and the essentially-nil penalty for death (you go back to a respawn point) ..."
• "... driving sucks."
• "The game is not without flaws; sometimes the aiming gets caught on things you don't want to aim at, sometimes a target is unreasonably difficult to find and takes some wandering around to get to."
• "... once all the criminals are gone, the city really isn't as interesting anymore."

All of these statements are still descriptive of Crackdown 3. Hell, even my endgame state - my driving stat is low, but the others are close to maxed - is pretty much the same as when I'd finished the first game.

That Crackdown 3 feels so faithful to its forebear is simultaneously remarkable and disappointing. Its collectible-driven gameplay loops are fun, and the incredibly-bombastic combat can be a real treat. But the game is also structurally simple, with very few twists or surprises in its missions/challenges, and a story that sounds like it was written over a weekend.

The worst part is, I doubt that someone who hadn't played Crackdown before will be able to enjoy this third iteration. Compared to its contemporaries, Crackdown 3's controls are clunky, and its world is a bit bland.

But, for someone who enjoyed Crackdown, this is the same thing again. With Terry Crews in it.

Better than: Yooka-Laylee
Not as good as: Saints Row IV
More thrilling, but less mechanically fascinating, than: Agents of Mayhem